Recently, I travelled to Guatemala and Mexico. During my time there, I met a number of individuals who told me I was “a very nice Canadian girl,” who expressed concern for my safety and who asked why I didn’t have a Canadian flag on my backpack.

Whenever I go out to my parents’ cabin at Bel-Air, Man., I make a point of accessing the water directly from my aunt and uncle’s cabin, which is a waterfront property a couple of doors down, by way of the staircase they’ve constructed leading down to the rocky beach.